Learning your brain

Recently, in my day job, I went on a time management course. This was mostly because, hey, who doesn’t love a day out the office? Plus, free lunch! And one of the things we learned was finding our ‘styles’ of time management; I was not even vaguely surprised, once I found out such a thing existed, to learn I’m a hopper.

What does this mean for writing? Consider I have, at last count, 19 WIPs and 3 drafts I’m editing, and generally write bits into a handful of WIPs over the course of a week. This approach, while fun (shall we go to space today? or to WY?), means I’m not fully concentrating on any one thing for long and, in honesty, isn’t really sustainable if I want to avoid burning out. My brain needs the dopamine boosts that come from completing projects.

Or petting. My brain will take petting. Or a dog.

So I’m trying to take things one… Okay, two projects at a time. One WIP, one edit. Ngl it’s been difficult. But since starting this approach on Feb 1 I’ve drafted one short and am ~60% into a novella, with a reasonable expectation to finish this month. I’m chafing a bit because I see other WIPs making sadfaces but I’m staying strong. Dopamine will provide.

If you’re a hopper…

Tools that bring varying results for me are those blocking other apps and programs, like Writer’s Block or WriteMonkey. (And I hear good things about Anti-Social, but I’ve not used it.) Sometimes these work but other times I go dick about in another room instead, which is super unproductive (but there’s a pretty rug in there so). The experiment is still in progress.